Why is Your Car Better Monitored Than Your Health?

Hans Notenboom

Lead Digital Marketing, Philips

More and more people track their activity level and well-being using wearable devices but the feeling of our health being constantly monitored raises concerns. What if big data turns into “big brother?” In reality, we only use a handful of smart sensors; not a lot if you consider the complexity of our bodies.

In comparison, the average luxury car of today has almost 100 sensors that continuously monitor the state and performance of the vehicle to improve safety, optimize performance and lengthen the lifespan of the car. Why do we then struggle with the idea of a few sensors monitoring our personal health?

At SXSW® Interactive, Philips ran our Connect to Healthy Experience to better understand the impact of real-time monitoring of people’s health patterns. Registrants were invited to connect their wearable health device with the platform.

During the evert, we found people that take the quantified-self very seriously. We see consumers use more and more tracking devices, take more ownership of their personal health. But we learned that although a lot of people this year at SXSW® do own personal tracking devices and activity monitors, they have them at home in the drawer. Many people claim that a pure focus on living healthy is not enough of a reason to continuously wear the devices. (For the mobile phone as tracking device this is less of an issue).

We believe there is a big opportunity to leverage personal health data across the health continuum and provide value for prevention, diagnoses, treatment, speedy recovery and home care. Our experiment at SXSW® Interactive was just a first step to learn.

Our ambition is to deliver connected solutions from the hospital to the home, to enable a path to healthier living and wellbeing. We are building the HealthSuite Digital Platform, an open platform and public API to unlock the potential of data to help deliver more connected, continuous care.

A sneak peek into Connect to Healthy

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